♪♪
Nikola Tesla was the greatest inventor in American history.
A.c. Power, electric motors,
fluorescent lights, x-rays, wireless energy...
Tesla paved the way for all of these technologies.
Prince: Tesla was taking several of his inventions
and putting them together to become this superweapon.
He called it the death ray.
Murphy: Did Tesla invent the world's first
weapon of mass destruction?
And was he murdered for it?
Narrator: Now a military investigator...
A historian... And an engineer
unlock the mysteries behind what could be
the greatest cover-up of the 20th century.
Koscho: We're gonna build Tesla's death ray.
I want to put together a prototype,
throw some capacitors together, get one of the Tesla coils out.
Ah, what the [bleep] oh, we blew this the [bleep] up.
Pike's peak?
Yeah, that's Colorado Springs.
Tesla went there in 1899
and built an experimental station.
You know, anything you can find
is really gonna help me at this point.
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
Look at that.
Tesla used the copper water main here to ground his lab.
I want to dig a hole out back. I want to fill it with copper.
I want to connect it to the coil.
Let's hope this [bleep] works.
Three... two... one.
- Wow! Holy [bleep]! - It works, guys.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications
narrator: On January 8, 1943,
Nikola Tesla is found dead in a New York hotel room.
His safe is cracked, documents are stolen,
but no autopsy is performed,
and no forensic evidence is collected.
With the successful test-fire of the death ray,
Tesla's superweapon
and his plans to send wireless energy across the world
were closer to reality than we had previously imagined.
And the team now believes there's a definite connection
between Tesla's suspicious death and his death ray.
♪♪
- We got it done, huh? - We did, man. We got it done.
Koscho: We built a prototype, and it did work.
This death ray could've been the real deal.
Tesla was not just pulling this stuff out of his ass.
Yeah. It's not magic. It's engineering.
Exactly. But I think we can go big with this.
I don't see any reason why we can't scale this up
to something that's, you know, 20, 25 feet tall.
We built a grounding system for the prototype
that is similar to the ones Tesla used
for his tests of wireless power transmission, and it worked.
That current had to flow
from the capacitor bank through the Tesla coil,
out the top, through the beam,
and into our target without blowing anything up.
Tesla theorized that this could destroy aircraft.
So we need to prove Tesla's theory could work here,
and in order to do that, we start to scale this thing.
At this point, you've proven that the death ray
was a real, feasible concept,
which now introduces the idea
that there may have been motivation for a murder.
People would've wanted to get their hands on it.
So did someone kill Tesla for it?
That's the next question we have to try to answer.
It's a hell of a question.
We have to start taking the theory
that Tesla might've been assassinated
a little bit more seriously, so I think the direction
that this investigation is taking
is gonna have to shift.
In any murder investigation,
you want to look at who had the means, the motive,
and the opportunity to commit the crime,
and I think that's what we need to start looking at.
This is something that could've defeated
long-range nuclear bombers.
World superpowers would've done anything
to get their hands on these types of designs.
Now, who's the enemy in 1943?
Tesla died at the height of world war ii.
There were so many countries that were involved in this war,
and every one of them were desperate
to get their hands on something
that could protect them and keep them safe.
To understand the impact the death ray would've had,
you have to understand what was going on
in the world at that time.
Narrator: Battles rage over six continents,
devastating weaponry is being developed and unleashed...
Machine guns, Nazi v-2 rockets, torpedoes.
Any new weapon is being pursued,
and Tesla is telling the world
he has a superweapon that can end all wars,
making him the most valuable asset, or most dangerous threat,
to any world power.
We're looking at an investigation
that's the ultimate cold case.
All the witnesses, suspects,
they're probably all dead at this point.
But what we do have is these FBI documents
that were written just four days after Tesla died.
This one's dated January 17, 1943.
It says that Tesla has a distant relative
by the name of sava kosanovic.
This says the day after Tesla died
that sava kosanovic got into the hotel room,
cracked open the safe, and made off with some documents.
He broke in. I mean, this is pretty shady.
He actually had the safe cracked open.
What did he get out of the safe?
- It's suspicious, at least. - Yeah.
Narrator: Towards the end of his life,
Nikola Tesla becomes increasingly withdrawn,
spending all his time alone
in his hotel room at the new yorker.
Rumors spread that the inventor hates the touch of other people.
Few visitors are allowed,
but Tesla makes special arrangements
to see his nephew sava.
Sava is likely one of the last people to see Tesla alive
and perhaps the first person to see him dead.
Here's what we know for sure.
When Tesla died, his nephew sava kosanovic
made a beeline for his hotel room
at the new yorker in New York City.
Someone broke in to the safe and took things
before the FBI got there.
Those documents that were stolen...
Nobody knows what those are or where they are.
There are rumors that some of those documents
may be about the death ray.
Narrator: Sava kosanovic, allegedly an active communist,
returns home to modern-day Serbia
shortly after Tesla's death,
reportedly carrying the stolen documents
from Tesla's safe with him.
Years later, he petitions the Serbian government
to open a Tesla museum and archive
to store all of Tesla's materials.
But this archive is off-limits to the public,
and its full contents unknown.
This FBI document here
says there is a strong likelihood that kosanovic
will make such information available to the enemy.
Well, it seems to imply that sava was up to no good.
Sava kosanovic is all over these FBI documents.
And if they were that interested in him,
then I want to know what happened to him.
Sava kosanovic is the first person we have to look at.
He's suspect number one.
There's not a lot of information
about what happened when sava got back to Serbia.
We need to track down where these documents went.
If that leads to Serbia, then that's where we need to go.
Narrator: While Aron and his team
get to work on the scaled-up death ray,
Jack and Cameron travel to Serbia,
hoping to learn more about sava's movements there.
To the Serbs, Tesla is like George Washington to Americans.
Tesla is a national hero in Serbia.
The international airport is named after Tesla.
He appears on their $1 bill.
Prince: He is a role model.
He embodies what it means to be a Serbian.
I believe serbians would do anything
to protect the legacy of Nikola Tesla.
Murphy: The FBI documents pit sava
as somebody who's highly suspicious.
Everybody knows of him,
but they don't really know anything about him.
Prince: And he's like the ghost that we just can't pin down.
He preserved Tesla's legacy
by making sure those records stayed intact.
We have to give him that.
I guess the question is why. And why bring them to Belgrade?
We got a good place to start.
We have to get access to the archives.
Murphy: I wonder if sava hid the stuff from Tesla's safe
in the rest of the materials that are now in the archive.
But if we can't find them there, then where are they?
- Let's go do some homework. - Yeah.
♪♪
Murphy: My first move in an investigation
is to interview witnesses
and people who have firsthand information.
But Tesla's death is colder than most cold cases,
so the only thing I can do is go to the Tesla museum archive,
where his effects and documents,
contained in the 80 trunks
that were seized by the U.S. government,
are all under lock and key.
But I want to just walk through
the front door of the Tesla museum
and ask to see the archives, just to do my due diligence
and make sure there isn't any way to gain access to them.
♪♪
Hey. How's it going?
So, my friend and I,
we're wondering if we can get access to the archives.
There's no way we can see the archives?
We don't have any idea why the Tesla museum
keeps such a guard on this material
and why they won't let just anyone access it.
Murphy: After being denied access to the archives,
we need to regroup.
Cameron and I need to find local sources
who can help us out here.
I didn't fly all the way to Serbia just to spin our wheels.
Narrator: Tapping the network he developed in the military,
Jack makes contact with a local informant.
The source is willing to talk
but only if they meet out of the public eye.
Investigating Tesla, a national hero,
is still taboo in Serbia.
Murphy: An investigation like this
is all about who you know and who knows who.
When you go into a foreign country,
you want to make local contacts, people who have a sort of
nuanced understanding of the local situation
that, as Americans, we won't have.
Murphy: Hey. Good morning.
- Jack. - Predrag.
So, we came to try to get the Serbian perspective on things.
I was wondering if you could tell us more
about sava kosanovic.
We kind of lose track of him
when he leaves america and comes back to Serbia.
What was his role in the government?
What did he do here when he came back home?
Narrator: Following Tesla's death,
sava kosanovic's time in Serbia is shrouded in mystery.
Supposedly a loyal member of the communist party,
he may have had ties to the Soviet union,
leaving many historians to wonder
if he was more than just a politician.
In order to gain access to the archives at the museum,
who do you think we should talk to?
Uh...
We know it isn't going to be easy, but we're really hoping
that you can get us access to those archives.
- Very good. - I really appreciate that.
Do you think they'll give us access to the archive?
Prince: We're looking for the missing pieces of the death ray.
Do you think they're in the museum?
Yes.
Koscho: We need to run some structural tests on it.
- Think this is gonna hold? - 250!
It scares the [bleep] out of me.
Prince: We've been studying Tesla for all these months.
I've been doing it all my life. Never seen anything like that.
That makes the death ray real.
♪♪
Narrator: Aron and his team
have successfully tested a small-scale death ray.
- Wow! Holy [bleep] - Wow.
All right, well, now that we know this works,
we can move on to something a little bit bigger.
They are now moving on to a large prototype
of Tesla's weapon.
If they can prove the death ray
could shoot an aircraft from the sky,
it will provide a motive for the murder of Nikola Tesla.
Koscho: Tesla, he used a sphere on top of his death ray.
You know, a sphere makes a lot of sense.
Fabricating one, it's going to be pretty challenging.
It's a lot of metalwork. It can be pretty time-consuming.
But it fits the original model that Tesla had.
We're building a very dangerous device here,
and we're building it with a lot more energy,
and so before we connect this big capacitor bank,
we need to make sure that the weaponized part
that discharges the energy is structurally sound.
We need to make sure that we get the rings
and the structure right, in that we don't have any sharp points
because if there's even the smallest sharp point
in a place we don't want it,
that's where the discharge from the death ray will leave.
If this beam goes somewhere we don't expect it to,
it could cause tremendous damage.
It could kill somebody. It could blow something up.
We really need to focus on getting
every little surface of this thing perfectly smooth
so the death-ray beam leaves
from exactly where we tell it to leave from and nowhere else.
Similar to the barrel of a gun,
it's building up, building up, building up kinetic energy
until it finally exits from the muzzle.
We'll attach a muzzle to our sphere,
and that's where the death-ray beam is gonna exit.
And at the very moment the death-ray beam discharges,
all of that energy flows down our point,
out our muzzle, and to our target.
I think this is gonna be a hell of a process, and it starts now.
Narrator: Jack and Cameron are in Belgrade, Serbia,
trying to find the documents allegedly stolen
on the night of Nikola Tesla's suspicious death.
All roads lead to the archive at the Tesla museum,
an area that's still kept under lock and key
by the Serbian government.
With the archive heavily protected,
Jack and Cameron have turned to local sources
to try to gain access.
The pair follow their first local lead to a hidden landmark,
an abandoned power plant
where Tesla's technology was first utilized in Serbia.
They are meeting a potential source
who has firsthand knowledge of the Tesla archives.
They hope he can provide information
on how to gain access to the forbidden room
and find out what exactly the serbians are hiding from the public there.
So it's the system that Tesla designed.
Narrator: At the turn of the 20th century,
Tesla's alternating current revolutionizes power generation
and helps create the modern power grid.
Tesla's invention changes the world
and leads to an a.C. Power grid
being built here in his homeland.
But for Tesla, a.C. Power is just step one.
His focus quickly moves to his true obsession...
Wireless energy.
Murphy: Me and Cameron, we've been investigating
that whole chain of events after Tesla passed away...
Sava kosanovic packing up all the documents,
shipping them to Belgrade.
That came from New York?
We're looking for the missing pieces of the death ray.
Do you think they're in the museum?
Uh...
How do we get access to the archive at the museum?
Murphy: I think what abramovic was trying to communicate
is that you have to know the right people
and that you have to find someone on the inside.
Why do you think they limit access to the museum?
Prince: Tesla has been dead for 75 years.
What is the Serbian government trying to cover up?
♪♪
Murphy: Abramovic didn't seem hopeful that we'd be able
to gain access to the Tesla archives.
But we're not ready to give up yet, especially considering
that there might be plans to the death ray down there.
We've got one more lead.
Hopefully he can get us access to the archives,
and maybe he can illuminate us about sava.
Hi. Thanks for meeting with us today. I'm Jack.
- Cameron. - Vladimir.
I was wondering if you could
talk to us a little bit about Tesla.
You spent eight years researching him?
Yes. People think about Tesla
as a symbol of unbridled creativity,
not marred by profit or anything else.
He was not your usual scientist.
What about sava kosanovic? What do you know about him?
Why are you so interested in kosanovic?
Narrator: Jack and Cameron have reason to believe
there are documents that could provide clues
about Nikola Tesla's death
hidden in the basement of the national Tesla archive,
protected by the Serbian government
and inaccessible to the public.
We've got one more lead.
Hopefully he can get us access to the archives,
and maybe he can illuminate us about sava.
I was wondering
if you could talk to us a little bit about Tesla.
You spent eight years researching him?
Yes. People think about Tesla
as a symbol of unbridled creativity,
not marred by profit or anything else.
He was not your usual scientist.
What about sava kosanovic? What do you know about him?
Why... why are you so interested in kosanovic?
When sava was getting Tesla's estate
and bringing it over,
he kind of disappeared.
Murphy: I don't know why pistalo is evasive.
We're not finding any more information about sava,
and based on my military experience, that's suspicious
because politicians don't just disappear, but spies do.
Kosanovic sent his estate to yugoslavia.
It was approved by the United States authorities,
and they probably had a reason to approve it.
Regarding Tesla's death,
there is a series of suspicious activities
that happened immediately afterwards.
I was wondering what your thoughts are,
what you gather about the documents
that were stolen out of Tesla's safe.
There is not much to tell.
If these documents were found,
then we can... Then we are in business.
Then we can talk about that. Like, this, it is just hearsay.
We don't have to make the story more complicated than it is.
We don't have to try to make it any more wondrous.
Pistalo is being so guarded
that it makes me believe that there's a lot more here.
It makes me want to get into those archives even more.
What do you know about the death ray?
The death ray is something
that much has been spoken about but little is known.
Probably he was thinking about that.
He was making his notes according to what he knew
in a code that was known only to him.
He encrypted his own notes.
He encrypted it with a crypt that we don't know.
We've been trying to gain access
to the archives at the Tesla museum,
and we've had kind of a hard time at it.
Why is it so hard to get access to the museum?
Because it potentially could be dangerous.
Prince: Pistalo isn't the first person
to tell us the information in the archive could be dangerous
if it's released to the public.
To me, this means that there are plans there
for weapons and other inventions
that could be deadly if they're in the wrong hands.
How did you get in the archives?
Actually it was a friend of mine who was...
Who was connected with the Tesla museum.
But it was back then. I was maybe lucky.
Maybe it was a different time because it is usually the people
who lead the institution who decide about these policies.
So what is it gonna take to get in the museum?
How can we get in there?
How can we get access to the archives?
Goodwill.
[ Laughs ]
I think Tesla would have wanted
his papers to be made available.
- That would be hugely helpful. - Yeah, that'd be very helpful.
I appreciate that.
Thank you so much for meeting us today.
Bye-bye.
It's been very enlightening. Thank you.
[ Beep]
Murphy: Hi. Mr. [bleep].
This is Jack Murphy. I'm here with Cameron prince.
We were given your number by Mr. Pistalo.
Jack Murphy and Cameron prince.
We're two researchers.
We're doing an investigation on Nikola Tesla.
We were wondering if we could gain access
to the archives at the Tesla museum.
We've been trying and not having much luck,
but Mr. Pistalo said you were the person we should talk to.
We're looking for any kind of documents
that the museum might have, especially about the death ray.
Narrator: Aron's team is building a large prototype
of Tesla's death ray.
If they can prove this weapon was more than a myth,
it will provide a motive for the murder of Tesla.
The first step is fabricating the sphere,
the weaponized portion of the death ray.
- You want the whole stack? - It's a 10-foot sphere.
- Yes, we need the whole stack. - Okay. The whole stack then.
Narrator: Although Tesla's original plans
called for a sphere at the top of the weapon,
the plans may have been different towards the end of his life.
His obsessive-compulsive disorder had become so extreme,
he avoided all round objects.
He also became a severe germaphobe,
recoiling at the touch of human hair.
But even as his behavior grew increasingly bizarre,
his experiments never lost their precision,
and Aron's team must follow suit.
Koscho: One of the cool things about the death ray
is that it wasn't just about a death ray.
It could've been used
for wireless power transmission, as well.
And this was something Tesla theorized.
I mean, you have this huge amount of power here.
And it's been satisfied on a small scale
but never on the industrial, massive,
you know, global scale that Tesla envisioned it.
So, obviously, we need to find a solution and get this right.
We're building a very dangerous device here.
If we don't have a good sphere,
then we have an unpredictable death ray.
The first step in building the sphere
is going to be building the frame, the skeleton for it.
We need to be able to know where
all of the energy that's stored in this thing is going to leave,
and the sphere determines how that works.
You and I are just gonna be walking around this thing,
checking and holding and making sure it's all right
before it gets permanently welded.
Oh, yeah.
- Does that look like a circle? - It looks like a circle.
We've seen these Tesla coils,
you know, arc off of random, sharp points before,
and you have to, like, control [bleep]
The raw power that this death ray can deliver,
it's something not to be taken lightly,
and we need to be very cautious.
Mistakes at this scale can be a lot more costly.
- You're gonna be trapped inside. - Okay.
- Hey. - It fits!
Dude, that's awesome.
So, right now it's just gonna be
kind of a skeleton frame, you know?
But after that tubing goes on,
it'll look a whole lot more like a ball.
Koscho: The most critical part is actually the rings.
The rings create the smooth, circular shape.
It might sound really complicated,
but if you take a bowling ball and you pour water over it,
it flows over it in a perfectly smooth stream,
and that is what we need our high voltage to do around our sphere.
[ Clanging ]
All right. See if it fits.
Oh, dude, that's gonna fit perfectly.
Koscho: We need to make sure
that this sphere appears to be perfect
to the electric field that's around it.
That means no sharp edges, no bad welds.
Everything has to be polished and smooth.
- Oh. Dude, look at that. - Don't get any better than that.
It's gonna be strong as [bleep]
Narrator: For Tesla, even the smallest detail
of his inventions are critical.
Obsessed with his work,
Tesla sleeps only two to three hours a night.
In one legendary stretch, he works for 84 hours straight.
In the brief time he does sleep,
Tesla suffers from nightmares about his unfinished inventions.
So, next up for the sphere
is going to be running some structural tests on it.
I want to pull on this thing, and I want to make sure
that nothing pops, breaks, bends, deforms.
And if I can pull on it and I know it all works,
then I'm gonna be 100% confident
in its electrical and mechanical stability.
[ Electricity buzzing ]
Narrator: Jack and Cameron follow the trail of information
to their most promising contact yet...
An informant they hope
can get them access to the archive,
an area the Serbian government deems off-limits to the public.
So, is this guy gonna show up?
Hope so.
This is, like, our last-ditch effort.
- He's got to show. - Yeah, pretty much.
♪♪
Is that him there?
Narrator: Jack and Cameron hope that gaining access
to the national Tesla archives
might provide them with clues about the inventor's death
and unravel the mystery around the documents
allegedly stolen from Tesla's safe that night.
Is this guy gonna show up?
I sure hope so.
Murphy: We were wondering if we could gain access
to the archives at the Tesla museum.
Mr. Pistalo said you were the person we should talk to.
We're hoping this can help open some doors for us
to get into the archives and let us know
if there are any plans to the death ray there.
As an investigator, I've learned that when you go abroad
and you conduct an international investigation like this,
it's a game of counting on other people.
The reality is that you're only as good
as your sources are reliable.
Is that him there?
Mr. [bleep]
Uh, I'm Jack Murphy.
We were hoping that you could talk to us a little bit today
and tell us about Tesla.
Prince: The reason we're here
is primarily to do with Tesla's weapon, the death ray.
Do you know anything about documents
that may be at the museum about that?
There are rumors that Tesla had an agreement
with a corporation called amtorg.
Supposedly they were a front for the Soviets.
If Tesla did sell something to the Soviets
and the receipt is there in the archives,
there's no telling what else is there.
Were there any other countries
that tried to buy the death ray other than Russia?
We know that there were three world powers...
The Nazis, the Soviets, and the United States.
All three of these parties were pitted against one another,
and they were in arms races.
We've always believed that there were major world superpowers
who wanted to get their hands on the death-ray plans.
But now that we know that the Germans approached Tesla,
that suspicion is becoming a reality.
Do you think Tesla finished the death ray?
We need access to the archives.
We've had a hard time
making some inroads there with the museum.
Do you think you could help us out?
To cut through the facts and fiction
and establish which is which.
We're trying to find out if the death ray ever really existed
and if Tesla was murdered.
Thank you so much for meeting with us.
- [Bleep] Yeah, bro. - We got it, man.
♪♪
Narrator: Aron and his team
are building a large-scale death-ray prototype.
If they can prove Tesla's invention
could've been a weapon of mass destruction,
it will provide motive for Tesla's murder.
So, the sphere is complete, and it turned out great.
One of the things we may learn from this death ray
is that Tesla's wireless power transmission ideas
weren't all that crazy.
We may be able to deliver a lot of energy,
without wires, to our target.
But we got a lot of work left on this death ray
because the next step for the sphere
is going to be load testing.
The thing is, if something does break,
we pretty much got to start from scratch,
because there won't be any salvaging it after the test.
- You think this is gonna hold? - I hope so.
- All right. It's 83 pounds. - Here you go, man.
- Oh, thanks. - Uh-huh.
- Getting a little cold out here. - Yeah.
All right, what do you want to do with this thing?
We really need a good structural test of this.
Everything here has been welded together. You did a good job on it.
It looks good, but if we pull on this and nothing breaks,
we know all the welds are good, then we also know
that everything is intact electrically.
If something pops off and ends up floating electrically,
then we have a problem.
There are some risks involved in discharging this death ray.
The amount of energy that we're dealing with here,
the raw power that this death ray can deliver,
it's something not to be taken lightly.
It scares the [bleep] out of me.
Narrator: While Tesla was a master inventor,
he doesn't always test his work, because he doesn't have to.
He constructs and proves
and even operates his inventions in his mind.
Tesla is known to fall into a trance-like state,
where he can see the invention from every angle.
Once out of the trance,
Tesla has exact measurements for every detail.
Let's put maybe 500 pounds or so of force across this thing.
If everything stays in place, then we're good.
Sounds good. Okay.
All right. Start pulling on it.
[ Laughs ]
[ Hydraulic whirring ]
- We're at 135. - Okay.
Zero it out.
Know what the weight of the sphere is now.
10.
30.
100.
Looking good.
200.
250! 300!
400.
500!
530.
Koscho: Perfect.
I think we've got it.
If it can hold that weight, then it's going to be able
to deal with anything we throw at it,
and it's gonna stay together, and if it stays together,
that means it's good electrically.
I'm really happy with how this sphere build turned out.
Now that we know the sphere is structurally sound,
we can connect it to the death ray
and we can figure out how we're going to get
all the power we need to make this beam.
We got a lot of work left, and with or without death-ray plans,
I've got to move forward with this project,
but I'm still really hoping Jack and Cameron
come back with some useful information.
All right, y'all. Let's get to it.
Okay.
♪♪
Murphy: The meeting went even better than I could've imagined.
Not only did he give us a final number,
but he also gave us his blessing
to contact someone on the inside.
I didn't want to go home without this.
This is a big deal. We're not playing around here.
This might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to go into the archives, but in my experience,
these opportunities don't come without restrictions.
This would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
And our time is limited when we actually arrive.
I don't fully know what to expect in there.
There you go. Keep the change.
- Thank you, sir. - Thanks, man. Bye.
Let's go find some treasure.
[ Siren wails ]
♪♪
Narrator: In 1941, Hitler formally announces
his vision for a new world order and will stop at nothing
to seize any new technology
which will strengthen his planned conquest.
According to multiple historians,
Adolf Hitler has learned
of Nikola Tesla's plan for the death ray
and is desperate to acquire the blueprints
for the world's first weapon of mass destruction.
If Hitler had been able to acquire Tesla's superweapon,
some believe his plan for global domination may have succeeded,
forever rewriting history.
♪♪
Narrator: Jack and Cameron are granted unprecedented access
for one hour to the Tesla archives here in Serbia.
- Hi. Milica. - Hi.
Prince: You were expecting us.
Murphy: We have the file number right here, if that helps.
♪♪
Narrator: Any information about Tesla's death ray
in the archives could prove conclusively
that there was motive to murder the inventor.
Kesler: In here.
♪♪
- This is it? - This is the Tesla archive.
♪♪
Wow.
Murphy: That's incredible.
Come on.
Getting access to the archive is nothing short of a miracle.
- This is a sketch. - Mm-hmm.
Wow.
- Tesla's own hand. - Yes.
Have these documents ever been published?
- No. - No? Really?
- August 28, 1935. - Yes.
This is the real deal.
Is that the death ray?
That's definitely the death ray.
[ Thunder rumbling ]
I mean, look at this. This is 35...
No, no, no.
- No touch. - No touch.
Oh, I'm not touching.
All right, what are these notations?
Is this the dimensions of the tower?
I don't know what is... That is a note.
Can we begin scanning the documents?
Just a moment.
There's a lot of information here, and we need to capture it.
We brought in a proscope device that's gonna take
high-resolution scans without having to touch the documents.
That allows us to take as many scans as we can
in the limited amount of time we have,
then take these documents outside the museum
so that we can analyze every detail with a fine-toothed comb.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
♪♪
- Here we got dimensions. - Yeah.
- 60 feet. - By 8.2.
Meters wide.
He's switching between metric and standard.
Yeah, there's metric, standard,
and they're mixed even in the same measurement.
You can see that it was kind of
almost a progression from one to the other.
I mean, this is a lot more
than just the physical design of the tower.
This is him actually
working through the electronics, the engineering.
I mean, it clearly shows that this is something
he was actually trying to design.
And lookit here. We got dimensions.
Yeah. I also need to brush up on my math skills.
For sure. Me too.
Those formulas were huge.
On paper and in his mind, this was a real thing.
- He was working through it. - Yeah.
Yeah. Wow.
Prince: Tesla's research is extremely complicated,
and these documents are exactly what we were looking for.
There are notes about the death ray.
There's a wealth of information here.
- Wow, man. - My mind's blown.
I wasn't expecting to find all that, honestly.
We've been studying Tesla for all these months.
I've been doing it all my life. Never seen anything like that.
That makes the death ray real.
[ Thunder rumbles ]
You're telling me that Hitler
actually ordered the assassination of Tesla?
- Yes. - Holy [bleep]
This is missing, so he's got something original in there
that he's got pictures of.
It's not here.
Koscho: If something here fails, it's gonna be a catastrophic failure.